Feeding tubes are routinely placed in patients who lose their ability to feed themselves. Such tubes fall into two categories of naso-enteric tubes, gastrostomy or gastro jejunal tubes. Small-bore naso-enteric tubes are Salem sump or Levin tubes ranging from 12 fr up to 20 fr in size, whereas gastrostomy and gastro jejunal tubes typically have larger bores ranging from 18 fr up to 28 fr.
Small-bore enteral feeding tubes may become clogged in up to 35% of patients. Various factors contribute to tube occlusions including high viscosity enteral formula, feeding tube characteristics, insufficient flushing, and incorrect medication delivery—all reported in the medical literature.
Enteral liquid nutrition is delivered by gravity, pump, or bolus syringe feeding using formula such as Ensure®, which is a soy-based formula.
These tubes must be routinely flushed or irrigated before and after delivery of the liquid formula to prevent tube clogging. Such patients also routinely require the administration of medications through the tube because of their inability to swallow.
Typically, pills or tablets are crushed. The crushed pills or tablets are then manually dissolved in a small vessel such as a cup by adding water and physically stirring the contents and then aspirated, that is, drawn up, into a separate catheter-tip or enteric-tip administering syringe, and then ultimately the syringe used to infuse the medication into the feeding tube.
Manually stirring the crushed pills or tablets in a bathroom cup or specimen container often leaves behind undissolved bits and pieces of the crushed medication in the administering syringe that often clogs the feeding tube. Once clogged, the tube often cannot be unclogged requiring the removal and replacement of the tube that is traumatic to the patient and a costly unnecessary repeat medical procedure.
Liquid medications are sometimes available, but the sorbitol preservative in the liquid medications often negatively react with the enteric liquid soy-based Ensure® formula by congealing with the formula and solidifying within the tube to gum up or otherwise clog the tube with congealed formula. As such, liquid medication requires dilution with water to permit non-clogging administration.
Crushing and manually stirring and dissolving pills or tablets are a routine method of preparing medications for syringe infusion into a feeding tube because the pills do not contain the sorbitol preservative.
A variety of pill or tablet crushers are readily available in the marketplace. The classical use of the mortar and pestle to crush medications is also commonplace. However, just stirring the crushed pills or tablets does not sufficiently dissolve pills or tablets such that infusion of the medication leaves bits and pieces lodged within the tube to clog the tube.
While the prior art is replete with many pill crushers, there is no available known device which will effectively and completely dissolve the pills or tablets after they are crushed to prevent tube clogging during syringe infusion.
It would be extremely useful and beneficial to provide a device that would effectively and completely dilute and dissolve all forms of medication whether individual pills, crushed pills, liquid medication, or powder medication and which would also act as a convenient combination device for infusing the medication into a feeding tube after the medication is dissolved.
Toward this end, the present invention has been conceived.
Other objects, features and advantages of the invention shall become apparent as the description thereof proceeds when considered in connection with the accompanying illustrative drawings.